Chapter 2. Load Balancing Considerations
Distributing load between several Capsule Servers prevents any one Capsule from becoming a single point of failure. Configuring Capsules to use a load balancer can provide resilience against planned and unplanned outages. This improves availability and responsiveness.
Consider the following guidelines when configuring load balancing:
- If you use Puppet, Puppet certificate signing is assigned to the first Capsule that you configure. If the first Capsule is down, clients cannot obtain Puppet content.
- This solution does not use Pacemaker or other similar HA tools to maintain one state across all Capsules. To troubleshoot issues, reproduce the issue on each Capsule, bypassing the load balancer.
Additional Maintenance Required for Load Balancing
Configuring Capsules to use a load balancer results in a more complex environment and requires additional maintenance.
The following additional steps are required for load balancing:
- You must ensure that all Capsules have the same Content Views and synchronize all Capsules to the same Content View versions
- You must upgrade each Capsule in sequence
- You must backup each Capsule that you configure regularly
Upgrading Capsule Servers in a Load Balancing Configuration
To upgrade Capsule Servers from 6.7 to 6.8, complete the Upgrading Capsule Servers procedure in Upgrading and Updating Red Hat Satellite. There are no additional steps required for Capsule Servers in a load balancing configuration.
